Most sheet music for popular songs is not ideal if you want to play an accompaniment to the song. The sheet music is usually just a harmonised version of the melody. OK if you want to sit down and play the melody. But not if you want to sing the melody yourself and accompany yourself on piano.
And often the sheet music bears no resemblance to the recorded version. Sometimes the sheet music is just plain wrong!
So, I generally work from the chord changes. I just bash out the chords in the right hand, with a few melodic fragments now and then. My left hand does simple single note or octave bass accompaniment.

Question: Are there any music books that cover this topic? Either accurate transcriptions of the record, or more generally on accompanying techniques.
Thanks,
Mike

Hey Mike. Do you want to accompany singers? If so, the best way to learn is to listen to pro piano players/accompanists like the ones that work with Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughn, Diana Krall (who does it herself when she sings), Ella F, etc.

Many pro singers have their own book of charts in their key. Sheet music is usually written in keys many singers can't sing in or not in the original record key.

Also, put an ad on craigslist and offer to work with singers just for experience. Accompanying is an art and great piano players aren't necessarily great accompanists. The other thing to do is take lessons from a pro accompanist or find a class that deals with this subject. Good luck

katt

If you want to look at accurate transcriptions of piano accompaniment of singer/pianists, you can look on Amazon. There's a book for billy joel and a book for elton john that are exactly as they are played on the recordings. They are by hal leonard and are called note-for-note keyboard transcriptions. Also ben folds has a bunch of books of his cd's that have accurate piano transcriptions and some even have the drums and bass. I hope this helps